Baba snorted with displeasure as he plunged into the same
bristling pathway. The thick-set, thorny branches smote Ramona's
cheeks. What was worse, they caught the nets swung on Baba's
sides; presently these were held fast, and Baba began to rear and
kick. Here was a real difficulty. Alessandro dismounted, cut the
strings, and put both the packages securely on the back of his own
pony. "I will walk," he said. "It was only a little way longer I would
have ridden. I shall lead Baba, where it is narrow."
"Narrow," indeed. It was from sheer terror, soon, that Ramona shut
her eyes. A path, it seemed to her only a hand's-breadth wide,-- a
stony, crumbling path,-- on the side of a precipice, down which the
stones rolled, and rolled, and rolled, echoing, far out of sight, as
they passed; at each step the beasts took, the stones rolled and fell.
Only the yucca-plants, with their sharp bayonet-leaves, had made
shift to keep foothold on this precipice. Of these there were
thousands; and their tall flower-stalks, fifteen, twenty feet high, set
thick with the shining, smooth seed-cups, glistened like satin
chalices in the sun.
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